This was written by Gabe, one of our summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.
The new Taylor Swift song is delightfully average. It’s not a groundbreaking or new sound; no one will challenge you for calling it pop. It’s a catchy song. One that I will admit has been bouncing around in my head for the past couple days. Which alone isn’t that big of a deal – songs get stuck in my head all the time – but “You Need to Calm Down” is different enough from my regular earworms that it warrants comment.
Before we can talk about “You Need to Calm Down” we need to clarify something: what the heck is a gay anthem? A gay anthem is a song that has become widely popular among, or has become identified with, the gay community, although some of these songs may also become anthems for the rest of the LGBT community as well. They range from bi-curious exploration (“I Kissed a Girl”) to anthems of overcoming adversity (“Defying Gravity”) to just fun danceable hits (“It’s Raining Men”.)
I’m not quite sure whether or not Swift intended for the song to be a gay anthem but pumping the music video full of LGBT celebrities doesn’t feel like a very neutral move. In total, 29 celebrities make an appearance in the video. The list includes dancer Dexter Mayfield, YouTuber Hannah Hart, actress Laverne Cox, model Chester Lockhart, entertainer Todrick Hall, singer Hayley Kiyoko, actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, lawyer Justin Mikita, singer Ciara, television series Queer Eye’s Fab Five (Tan France, Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown, Antoni Porowski, and Jonathan Van Ness), figure skater Adam Rippon, singer Adam Lambert, television personality Ellen DeGeneres, entertainer Billy Porter, entertainer RuPaul, singer Katy Perry, and actor Ryan Reynolds. A number of impersonators, most of whom are drag queens and past contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, also appear in the video impersonating various female singers.
Taylor Swift herself is not LGBT (at least, she hasn’t said or done anything to suggest that she is) which posits a valid question: why is she even doing this? At first glance, one could say it’s Swift banging the drum of LGBT rights, finally taking a stand with a marginalized community, which, is true (to an extent,) but feels forced. The line “Why are you mad when you could be GLAAD” (referencing the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) sounds about as substantial as a can of Easy Cheese. In the lyric video, anytime the letters “ea” appear, they’re a different color from the rest of the word, an allusion to the Equality Act, though at first view it’s easy to miss anything different at all.
Things get a little messier when the music video comes into play (and that’s not just an allusion to the cake fight at the end.) The video is full of gay-coded symbolism, ranging from pastels to rainbows to “glam fashion” – that is, bedazzled or otherwise exuberant clothing or accessories. Now, those are all legitimate pieces of LGBT symbolism, but the video dances around the POC community’s advances for LGBT rights. The Stonewall Uprising, one of the critical points in the Gay Liberation Movement, had several trans women of color as the first to fight. The most the video references Stonewall is a three second scene in which Ryan Reynolds paints a picture of the façade of the building.
So, “You Need to Calm Down” misses the mark, this much is true, but the hate it’s (albeit ironically) receiving is misplaced. The underlying issue is on the “corporatization” of the LGBT community. Every Pride Month, the rainbow seems to creep into every facet of our lives: companies change logos, there are sales of LGBT media, malls and stores fly the rainbow (and occasionally) the trans flag above their stores. Do those companies actually care about the struggles of the LGBT community? or are they just trying to make more money from the LGBT coffers than before? Unfortunately, the answer tends towards the latter, which isn’t terribly reassuring, that companies are only “supporting” (if you could call it that) LGBT rights to make more money, but there’s a visual element that people tend to ignore.
Representation matters. It’s a powerful thing for people to be able to see themselves in the world around them. From superheroes to just regular kids, representation is the lens that lets someone view themselves as one who belongs. Spider-Man is a poor kid from Queens; Kamala Khan is a young Muslim girl in America; and Black Panther is the king of Wakanda, a fictional country in Africa. The potential for someone to relate to those three is one reason for their popularity. The rainbows and trans flags and other LGBT symbols scattered about by companies might not do a whole lot deeper than show, but for a twelve-year-old kid just starting to question their sexuality, seeing a world pulsing with acceptance (or at least, ambivalence) can be a pretty powerful thing.
I am no longer twelve nor questioning my sexuality. I don’t really need the whole representation shtick, I know that value and dignity exist whether we see it or not. But not everyone is there yet, and if it takes pride month or a Taylor Swift song for them to get there, so be it.
(Also, come on, it’s a pop song, just let people enjoy music for what it is.)
If you want to do direct action, there are a few things you can do:
–Support LGBT charities too (these are only three, there are multitudes more):
https://www.glaad.org
https://itgetsbetter.org
https://www.thetrevorproject.org
–Call your representatives and tell them to support LGBT laws and rights (If you don’t know who represents you, type your address in here: http://myreps.datamade.us)
–Vote for candidates who support these issues.
